


As I Always Remember

by RobinWritesChirps



Category: Black Friday - Team StarKid
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Physical Abuse, Slice of Life, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:40:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23044162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobinWritesChirps/pseuds/RobinWritesChirps
Summary: From the first time Becky met Tom to the first time she met him again. Character study on Becky Barnes's deference and defiance. See tags for content (and potentially trigger) warnings.
Relationships: Minor Becky Barnes/Tom Houston
Comments: 13
Kudos: 22





	As I Always Remember

**Author's Note:**

> Please read the tags for this. This is very dark and I don’t want to dupe anyone into reading more than they’re willing.

12

She met him the first day of middle school, some orientation tour. Bouncing with excitement, she introduced herself and deflated when the boy stared at her for long and painful seconds before dashing away without a word. She learned Tom’s name from others and if it weren’t for their testimony, she might have thought him mute. It was a couple of weeks before she heard his voice for the first time. And then never stopped hearing it. Their friendship blossomed so easily, so naturally she wondered how it was that she hadn’t known him her entire short life already.

13

Tom sprouted like a weed over the summer, tall like a man, bigger and bulkier than all the other kids around them. The boys fought over him in PE, which put Tom at the center of attention like never before. Becky looked from the side, smiling at his embarrassed pride. The girls never paid him much mind, perhaps because no matter how strong, how very teenager he had become so suddenly, he had a clumsy way with words and couldn’t line up two sentences when a girl talked to him. Perhaps for that reason, Becky talked to him plenty. He was _so very strong_. He let her touch his flexed biceps once and neither of them could muster a word to each other for days following.

14

Before the summer break just before high school, Tom asked Becky if she would be going to Hatchetfield High as well. Then made sure to ask another dozen times, just in case. Becky never teased him for it, perhaps because the prospect of seeing Tom every day for another few years was just as thrilling to her as it seemed to be to him. There was something gentle about Tom, something mushy under the awkward gruff outside. Becky wondered if anyone else saw it. Then she wondered if Tom ever showed it to anyone else in the first place.

15

They made sense together, she told herself ever more. He played football, she cheered for him from the sidelines. She shared her notes with him, he carried her bag and her binders for her. He always gave her his dessert to spare, she thanked him with a kiss that daily veered ever more from cheek to mouth. When finally they kissed for real, she was hardly surprised, though no less thrilled for it. With him, she felt more clever, more brave, and she knew he was also kinder, funnier around her.

16

Her first everything, his first everything. More than the first, the second, tenth, hundredth too, kissing and loving each other everywhere, every moment they could. Loving Tom was easy, came to her as naturally as breathing in and out, sighing out her adoration for him. He became ever more confident, too, emboldened by how well received his advances always, always were. She became braver, perhaps a little sassier. They made each other better than they thought they could be.

17

He was made quarterback, she was his cheer captain. Plans were being traced for them of a future that seemed as bright as the sun, brighter even. A plan for him to enroll, to help the country while she pursuit some education, a path she could already imagine by heart. Promises and dreams in the dead of the night, whispers of love forever and ever. Nothing could tear them apart, she knew. She thought she knew.

18

She watched Tom ship away, waving at him long past the moment she was out of his sight. When he would come back, if he came back, then they would get married, find a place of their own, make it a home. She wanted him in her arms again, she wanted his kisses, his smiles, the goofy jokes that were only for her to hear. She promised him she’d wait for him.

She did not.

19

Stanley and her got married in a hurry, a small party with few people and none of them on the bride’s side. Stanley was thirty-three, his second marriage after the first faltered when he went to jail, and Becky was the only one who saw something in him now. Her family did not like him, her friends hated him. She lost a few of them, met some new ones at nursing school. She had never been completely sold on any one path of career for herself, had considered many options, but Stanley had decided she would be going to nursing school. Stanley liked to have his way. It was easier to let him.

20

She had never been a slacker in the first place, but she became always more applied, always more devoted to her studies and to her house. He liked a clean home when he passed the door, he liked a meal ready on the table and still hot, he liked for her to not have a single flaw, to never make mistakes. Becky became meticulous in all and every things. Of course, a full schedule of classes, a part time job to keep them afloat, all the chores, a balance harder and harder to strike, but she could not fail. She tried to never give him a reason to be mad. He got mad anyways.

21

She heard that Tom had gone to war again, finally recuperated enough from his injury to ship out again. Months and years since the war had started, but nothing had changed, not here in Hatchetfield anyways. She wondered what was the point of it all, what reward or freedom to pay off for all the suffering left in the trail of war. She wondered what Tom had to gain in it. She couldn’t stop him the first time. She certainly couldn’t now. She wondered if she would ever see him again.

22

There was no way to know Stanley’s mood before he stepped inside their home. The worst days, she tried not to think about, so as not to give herself the added pain of fearful anticipation. Some days, he was in a good mood and those sometimes were just as terrible as the bad days, always on the edge, never knowing if he was trying to trick her with every smile, every touch. The best days were when he ignored her, slumped in his bottles or plain out ignoring her. It was better not to be worth his time. She could find a discreet little nook in their house, tuck herself neatly somewhere quiet and lose herself in the thoughts of her own mind. Back in time, she could pretend she was still alright. She could pretend she was happy.

23

The last of her friends moved away, out of Hatchetfield and leaving Becky all alone. Her friends from school had scattered from her like a flock of birds after graduation. At work, she was friendly enough with all of her coworkers, especially with her patients, but she knew all too well the barrier between them that she could never cross. Nobody could know, nobody could see. She would not let them. They never tried, either.

24

She learned of Tom getting married to Jane Perkins from high school, getting her pregnant a mere few months later, all the talk at the coffee machine. She sipped her bland cup of coffee and tried to remember her. A kind enough girl, if her memories served her well, and particularly serious and determined. Becky supposed that Jane had won the highest prize of all in getting Tom to hold and love her. She supposed that Jane must have had something that she didn’t have herself. Or maybe she had had it, but thrown it away. She finished her coffee and her break and went back to work.

25

Work was a solace, if anything. All the jokes on finally going home after a long day never landed with her. She longed every night to be back at St Damian’s again in the morning. It was her freedom. Her locker was also the only place she could safely store away anything that was solely her own. She kept her birth control there, diligently and secretively taking her pill every day. They had sex when Stanley wanted to have sex, how he wanted it. She had stopped wanting to a long time ago, but above all, what she did not want was to bring forth a child to suffer the same fate as her. Stanley hated her for never, ever getting pregnant, and punished her for it. Every taunt, every blow had better land on her than on the child they would never have.

26

Without particularly looking for it, she spotted the name of Tom’s kid on some listing she was browsing. Timothy Houston. She remembered hours in each other’s arms, thinking up all the baby names for the family they never ended up having. She remembered hopes and dreams and the foolish, foolish thought that being in love was enough, was everything they needed. Timothy had never made the list, but she supposed that Jane Perkins had had her way once more.

27

She got assigned to the children’s wing at work when they took notice of just how much the kids enjoyed her shifts there. For a moment, Becky was filled with joy and satisfaction. She did love her work so much. She gave every patient, no matter how young, how old, all the patience and the tenderness she could still find in herself. They praised her for it, but nobody realized that she was the one reaping the rewards. Hugs and gentle touches and compliments and conversations like only little kids could hand out so readily, so freely. Becky was made to feel like an angel every day. Nobody could ever have understood how much the little patients meant to her.

28

Stanley left her at home for a whole weekend for a guys’ getaway. She had barely known he still really had friends, that he had a life beyond making hers a living hell. Three days the house to herself. She knew she should leave, pack up all her things and get out, get far, far away from here. All night she considered it, all day, and again the next and the next. She almost called a help line a thousand times. Every time her thumbs brushed the screen, she gave herself another reason against calling and the phone was put down again. If she left and he found her again, he would kill her, she knew. In his house, she was in pain, she was broken, but she was still alive. She was still curled up in a ball in the armchair when he came home, exhausted and dried out from all her tears of pity for herself. His smirk of victory remained burned in her memory.

29

Their tenth anniversary came. Becky could hardly believe it when she saw the date and counted the years. They did not celebrate, of course. They never had. She swore again that she wouldn’t let another year pass with him in this house. She could ask church for help, find a shelter, call a help line. She could still do _something_. But then Stanley had a sense for when her mind strayed from his path and order, and always when she thought of freedom, he seemed to know. He berated her for it, threatened her, hurt her, and she stayed. She always stayed.

30

Her parents passed within weeks of each other. They had been the only family she’d had left, and barely at that. They had never known about Stanley, what he did to her. She wondered if they had suspected. She wondered if that was why their contacts had dropped over time, only picking up with much effort on her part when they had gotten sick. Maybe the shame had kept them away. The night her mother was buried, she found herself wishing for Tom’s arms around her. He had always given the warmest of embraces. She hugged herself and Stanley grunted something about dinner not being ready yet, slammed a fist in the wall to show her how much he wanted to slam it into her instead. Becky made dinner.

31

She had loved Tom so much, she had craved him. Every day, Stanley took up all the space Tom had filled with sweetness and replaced it with the rotten obsession of his, the works of the devil himself behind his eyes, but he could never take it all. Some parts of Becky were still her own, some were still Tom’s, and no matter how ardently Stanley tried to claim them for himself, they could never be his. Twenty, thirty minutes on her own trying to prove to herself that her body still belonged to her, no matter how much Stanley marked and stained it. The memory of a pleasure long gone she tried to recreate, the caress of her fingers nothing like Tom’s, and the hatred and disgust she felt for herself had never been there either. She hid her tears when Stanley came home. She did not know if the secret rebellion of her own body made her feel better or worse, but she kept fighting.

32

She cleaned up the house in the spring and found an old blouse she thought she had lost, from way back before Stanley. She remembered the look on Tom’s face when she had showed it to him, proud of a cute little purchase, and even more the look on his face when she had pulled it off. It had been flowing then, snug now, but for a fleeting moment she was seventeen again. Stanley said she’d grown fat and ugly. The blouse was tucked back into a box at the bottom of the closet.

33

She asked herself why she was still alive, how it was that she still lived. At home, she did not know. Outside, she found a reason in the smile of a child as she sang him lullabies to make the needles less frightening, in the flutter of the wind tickling through her hair on a spring day, the sparkle of the stars on her way home at night. Stanley had taken so much of her, but not all of it. He never would. As long as she lived, she was herself, or at least what was left of her. That was better than nothing at all.

34

The rumors had been her enemy for years, the talks trailing behind her like smoke, but for once in her life, Becky was glad for them. If only Stanley had left her for a woman in Clivesdale. If only he had left her at all. Whenever she looked down at her hands, she could still see the stains of blood, no matter how often she washed them, how the weeks and months passed. She thought she had killed him. She knew she had killed a part of herself as well.

35

She saw Tom again. A call at her back, a few mumbles begging for her spot in the line and before she could brace herself for it, the kind eyes of Tom Houston staring at her with all the wonder of seventeen years apart. Caught by surprise, she gasped and paused but then she breathed again, she smiled. She lived.

They did not live another day, but at least, they spent their last one together. She never would have wanted to see the end of the world with anyone else anyways.


End file.
